looked at me as though I were a transfer student from the dumb class. “It doesn’t matter if I didn’t see anything. They think I did. So that day Nate was just telling me that he couldn’t protect me. He could only get me out of town. He has contacts in Cuba.”
“Cuba!”
“I’d just have to go for a year or so, he said. And my parents… they were just… well, you can imagine. And they don’t trust the government, either. Trust the FBI? They think if we go to the FBI, they won’t protect the son of two Commies.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. They went to go talk to my uncle. They’re trying to figure it out. We thought we had it bad before. Now I got us into a worse mess.”
“I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. But, Hank, if I could prove that Nate killed Delia, you’d have something on him. And maybe you could make a deal.”
He looked puzzled. “Make a deal? But I have to tell what I know eventually.”
“Why? Then they’ll really be after you!”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. My parents are just trying to figure out how to do it. So that I’m protected. If I go to the wrong cop, he could inform, and then… it’s curtains.” Hank pulled a funny face and drew a finger across his throat, but I knew how scared he was.
“And you’re in a mess, too, I guess,” he said. “Billy saw the headline?”
I nodded, biting my lip.
“Those reporters… I think they’ve given up.”
“They’ll be back tomorrow.”
“But it’s Thanksgiving!”
I snorted. “You think those guys have families?”
Hank looked down at the box. “Want to help me decorate for Christmas?”
“No, thanks.” I didn’t think I could bear ribbons and bells. “I’m just going to go to bed.”
He walked me to my door. Without my asking, he went inside and looked around, in closets, under beds. He put a chair under the handle of the front door. Then he hesitated at the kitchen door.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not. It’s nobody’s. You couldn’t know I’d be there that night. Even you wouldn’t think I’d be such a drip.”
“Not a drip,” I said, touching his arm. “Just a good guy, that’s all.”
I closed the door behind him and locked it.
I climbed into bed that night, praying for sleep. I had one more night to feel safe. One more night.
But I didn’t sleep, of course. I tossed and turned, trying to escape my dreams. I woke up when it was still dark, not even seven a.m., which was the middle of the night for me. I knew I wouldn’t sleep anymore.
I rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen. I reached automatically for the radio, but stopped. I didn’t want to hear the news.
I heard it now, the soft insistent knocking from the door to the street. Would reporters be out this early? I tiptoed to the door and leaned over the chair under the knob to get closer.
“Kit? Kit, are you there? Let me in.”
My heart lifted, and I felt giddy as I grabbed the chair and pushed it aside. I flung open the door.
I didn’t know why he was there, it was just a miracle that he was. I put my hands on his lapels and pulled him inside. Then I fell forward until my forehead hit against his chest.
“Jamie. You have no idea how good it is to see you.” My laughter bubbled out, fast and nervous. “Oh, I just remembered — it’s Thanksgiving! Did they send you down to make sure I’d come?”
Laughing, I pulled back from him, but he only hugged me harder. Suddenly, I realized that he wasn’t holding me in an embrace. He was holding me up, or preparing to, and the first alarm began to clang inside me.
His mouth was close to my ear and his voice was so much softer than the blow.
“Billy was killed last night.”
Thirty-one
New York City
November 1950
The agony of the minutes. To go from one to the next. To hold on to Jamie as I started to fall. And Jamie’s eyes were wet, crying again as he saw me absorb what he was saying, trying to tell me though a curtain had slammed down in my brain — No, it must be a mistake, no, I don’t understand you, no, this is not happening — that Billy was on a train going to Long Island, did I hear about the big